Editing Women's rights (section)

==== China ====
{{Main|Women in ancient and imperial China|Women in China}}
[[File:Bound feet (X-ray).jpg|thumb|right|[[Foot binding]], a practice commonly inflicted on [[Women in China|Chinese women]] between the 10th century and the early 20th century. The image shows an X-ray of two bound feet.]]
Women throughout historical and ancient China were considered inferior and had subordinate legal status based on [[Confucianism|Confucian law]].<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|title = The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History: 4 Volume Set|last = Smith|first = Bonnie G|publisher = Oxford University Press|year = 2008|isbn = 978-0-19-514890-9|location = London, UK|pages = [https://archive.org/details/oxfordencycloped0000unse_k2h2/page/426 426–27]|url = https://archive.org/details/oxfordencycloped0000unse_k2h2/page/426}}</ref> In Imperial China, the "[[Three Obediences and Four Virtues|Three Obediences]]" promoted daughters to obey their fathers, wives to obey their husbands, and widows to obey their sons. Women could not inherit businesses or wealth<ref name=":5" /> and men had to adopt a son for such financial purposes.<ref name=":5" /> Late imperial law also featured seven different types of divorces. A wife could be ousted if she failed to birth a son, committed adultery, disobeyed her parents-in-law, spoke excessively, stole, was given to bouts of jealousy, or suffered from an incurable or loathsome disease or disorder.<ref name=":5" /> But there were also limits for the husband – for example, he could not divorce if she observed her parents-in-law's mourning sites, if she had no family to return to, or if the husband's family used to be poor and since then had become richer.<ref name=":5" />

Confucian thinking relegated women in China to subordinate roles and [[foot binding]] left them homemakers.<ref>{{Cite web |last=FlorCruz |first=Jaime A. |date=2012-06-15 |title=Chinese women push for a place in space |url=https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/15/world/asia/china-women-space/index.html |access-date=2024-06-08 |website=CNN |language=en}}</ref> About 45% of Chinese women had bound feet in the 19th century. For the upper classes, it was almost 100%. In 1912, the Chinese government ordered the cessation of foot-binding. Foot-binding involved the alteration of the bone structure so that the feet were only about four inches long. The bound feet caused difficulty in movement, thus greatly limiting the activities of women.{{Cn|date=October 2024}}

Due to the social custom that men and women should not be near each other, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male doctors of Western Medicine. This resulted in a tremendous need for female doctors of Western Medicine in China. Thus, female medical missionary Mary H. Fulton<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=04TOSAAACAAJ |title=Inasmuch |author=Mary H. Fulton|editor=The United Study of Forring |publisher=BiblioBazaar |year=2010 |isbn=978-1140341796 }}</ref> was sent by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to found the first medical college for women in China. Known as the Hackett Medical College for Women (夏葛女子醫學院),<ref>{{cite web |author=PANG Suk Man |url=http://lib-nt2.hkbu.edu.hk/cil-image/theses/abstracts/b15564174a.pdf |title=The Hackett Medical College for Women in China (1899–1936) |publisher=Hong Kong Baptist University |date=February 1998 |access-date=10 October 2015 |archive-date=16 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016090221/http://lib-nt2.hkbu.edu.hk/cil-image/theses/abstracts/b15564174a.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cqvip.com/qk/83891A/200203/6479902.html |title=中国近代第一所女子医学院－－夏葛医学院-【维普网】-仓储式在线作品出版平台-www.cqvip.com |publisher=Cqvip.com |access-date=9 December 2013}}</ref> the college was aimed at the spreading of Christianity and modern medicine and the elevation of Chinese women's social status.<ref name="RebeccaChan">Rebecca Chan Chung, Deborah Chung and Cecilia Ng Wong, "Piloted to Serve", 2012.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=纪念钟陈可慰 100 周年 (1920–2020)|url=http://www.cnac.org/rebeccachan_piloted_to_serve_01.pdf|access-date=2020-10-09}}</ref>

During the [[Republic of China (1912–49)]] and earlier Chinese governments, women were legally bought and sold into slavery under the guise of domestic servants. These women were known as [[Mui Tsai]]. The lives of Mui Tsai were recorded by American feminist [[Agnes Smedley]] in her book ''Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution''.<ref>Parts of this book are available online here [https://archive.org/details/portraitsofchine00smed <!-- quote=Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution. -->], at Google Books.</ref>

However, in 1949 the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] was overthrown by communist guerillas led by [[Mao Zedong]], and the [[People's Republic of China]] was founded in the same year. In May 1950 the People's Republic of China enacted the [[New Marriage Law]] to tackle the sale of women into slavery. This outlawed marriage by proxy and made marriage legal so long as both partners consent. The New Marriage Law raised the legal age of marriage to 20 for men and 18 for women. This was an essential part of countryside land reform as women could no longer legally be sold to landlords. The official slogan was "Men and women are equal; everyone is worth his (or her) salt".<ref>{{Cite journal|journal=The Developing Economies|volume=48|number=2|date=June 2010|page=B5|first=Noboro|last=Niida|title=Land Reform and New Marriage Law in China|url=http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Periodicals/De/pdf/64_01_01.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120403010912/http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Periodicals/De/pdf/64_01_01.pdf|archive-date=3 April 2012}}</ref>